Pete's art dump
page 5
(locked)

I’ve done lectures. It’s kind of fun to do them but ultimately the experience isn’t usually worth the effort. Mostly I do presentations about skateparks… that’s my full-time gig; promoting proper skatepark development for a nonprofit organization. Drawing and design, at least these days, is more for fun than money. During lectures, mostly I just stand up there, show a few slides, then talk about art and design for an hour with the audience. (I prefer conversations over monologues.)

Another shirt design for SPS based on the Godfather logo. The organization has a reputation within the skatepark industry for being unwavering concrete advocates. One steel-ramp company once referred to SPS as “the concrete militia,” hence the shirt.

Yet another design I did for SPS. A majority of the organization’s activities is working with communities directly, guiding them through the skatepark development process. As such, they are an educational nonprofit. Hence this riff on the PBS logo. It was a VERY polarizing shirt design. Some contributors loved it, and others hated it.

Thought one or two of you might find this interesting. This is a rough sketch of an “air tower” I did for fun to play with my tablet and experiment with coloring. I never got around to coloring it. (This is just the raw scan from a sketchpad.) This is basically where an idea starts. This particular version might be the third or fourth traced iteration until I felt like it was good enough to begin refining digitally. Maybe someday I’ll get back to this one.

On my first day at a sign shop I basically got fired. I was in high school and didn’t know anything from anything. I was taping off a panel truck to prepare it for painting and I got to the antenna. I coiled the tape up the antenna, (left). The boss strolled by, saw what I was doing, and ripped all the tape off. Then he taped it properly, (right). I wasn’t invited to come back the next day.

I’d like to see more of your collaborations for games, I really liked that TD game art you posted a while back. As always, great work, and just letting you know even if I’m not posting, I am watching this topic :)

Uzzbuzz, most of my game graphics are for paper-based productions. I’ll see what I can come up with. The most interesting thing about them is revealing some of the challenges and reasons behind why it looks the way it does.

Okay, here are a few of the concept files I created for an Army TCG. The client was a bit hesitant to produce the product and was still pitching it to the Department of Defense. I was paid for the concept work… and I don’t think the game was ever produced.

First, this is one of the sheets explaining the card faces. This diagram explains how the position of the rank icon suggests a particular meaning to the player.

Below, the rank icon is used as a number so that it can be easily seen while holding a fan of cards. The “color” is a unit designation that also serves as a “mana” requirement for recruiting new units to the field. For example, you cannot play a card unless you meet the requirement of other deployed units of that color. This moderates the pace of powerful cards.

The image below shows a sample color and colorless card face. This would be the player’s “root” card.

Below are some options for personnel (enlisted) and officer faces. Enlisted and Officers were treated differently. Each could satisfy different kinds of requirements.

Some color options for the card faces. (I did a shit-ton of these.) The shape arrangements had been developed earlier.

Gear could be added to the field. These needed to be differentiated, and required personnel to operate.

Some of the special ability icons.

The matches were won by performing 7 different missions. Each completed mission provides a bonus point. In this sheet, those victory bonus points are tracked by using glass beads.

Bonus missions can be played that don’t require all 7 traits. Here’s an example of how I proposed to handle that.

I drew all the icons based on real insignias. Here’s the enlisted and officer icons:

Finally, here are some of the icons I pitched to the client to identify how literal he was comfortable getting. This presents three degrees of iconography… from most graphic (simple) to least graphic (literal):

So, that shows what kind of files go back and forth during paper-based game development. It’s not so different for digital productions. I’m not sure how many images I just posted, but this entire projects probably produced 120 presentation sheets of graphics, lists, diagrams, schedules, and so on.

It’s really not that much work… but you DO work 8 or 10 hours at a stretch. I would take smoke breaks, or run out for a cup of coffee. My studio, during this project, was in my house so it was pretty easy to just get up, get to work.

This is basically a level of design expected in a professional environment. It doesn’t matter if you’re freelancing, working in a studio, or working in an art department. The level of output is about the same. They’re hiring you to work, and work you do. You make your decisions, stick with them (until they break) and move on. Looking back on this stuff, I see LOTS of things I screwed up on. (Mortars aren’t really “artillery,” for example.) But that’s okay, that’s what development is for. You throw an idea out there and stick with it until you realize it doesn’t work.

My client was basically one guy. He was essentially a salesman with a little bit of trading card game experience. This was a solo effort for him. The idea was a TCG that reflected true Army structure and characters… the most “realistic” military TCG ever.

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